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Willful Ignorance

I’ve always loved ideas and enjoyed the pursuit of knowledge. I don’t understand anyone who isn’t always interested in asking questions. However, I am now living in times when too many people refuse to ask about anything. After all, they might be told something that doesn’t match what they “know,” undermines their sense of righteous entitlement, or subjects their actions to criticism. They prefer to find someone positioned as an authority figure and surrender their free will (making that their ACTUAL last act of free will). They embrace willful ignorance.

Many of them fall back on their religion and their Bible. They “willfully” forget that those authorities make it clear that you are not entitled to any right or privilege that you don’t willing grant to everyone else. I think the phrase is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The current President of the United States just sat at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House and made statements regarding current events that were broad, accusatory and incendiary. When asked if he had proof, he stated that “There’s no proof of anything.” And that is yet another way willful ignorance works. Nobody can prove anything to them that they don’t believe in. You have “fake news” and “alternate facts.” You have THEM and US. And the USA has decided the entire world is THEM and only the USA (and some profitable alliances) are US. And that is why the USA has become less and less relevant to the rest of the world even as we refuse to look at how it happened or, even less likely, try to change anything.

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“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” ― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“Naive as it may sound, inoculating society against the antisocial requires, at bottom, persuading people of what is palpably true: that society has value and everyone should contribute.” – Bruce Cannon Gibney, Author